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Yandilli Trilogy #1-3
The Yandilli Trilogy
New York City, the early 1990 the recession is in full swing and young people are squatting in abandoned buildings in the East Village while the homeless riot in Tompkins Square Park. The Internet is not part of daily life; the term "dot-com" has yet to be coined; and people's financial bubbles are burst for an entirely different set of reasons. What can all this mean for a young Midwestern man flush with promise, toiling at a thankless, poverty-wage job in corporate America, and hard at work on his first novel about acute knee pain and the end of the world? With The Year of Endless Sorrows , acclaimed playwright and finalist for the 2003 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing Adam Rapp brings readers a hilarious picaresque reminiscent of Nick Hornby, Douglas Copeland, and Rick Moody at their best--a chronicle of the joys of love, the horrors of sex, the burden of roommates, and the rude discovery that despite your best efforts, life may not unfold as you had once planned.
493 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
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About the author
Rodney Hall
63 books21 followersBorn in Solihull, Warwickshire, England, Hall came to Australia as a child after World War II and studied at the University of Queensland. Between 1967 and 1978 he was the Poetry Editor of The Australian. After a period living in Shanghai in the 1980s, Hall returned to Australia, and took up residence in Victoria.
Hall has twice won the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, and has received seven nominations for the prestigious Miles Franklin Award, for which he has twice won ("Just Relations" in 1982 and "The Grisly Wife" in 1994).
Hall has twice won the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, and has received seven nominations for the prestigious Miles Franklin Award, for which he has twice won ("Just Relations" in 1982 and "The Grisly Wife" in 1994).
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
July 22, 2020
Just exquisite from start to finish. My (brief) reviews can be found at the pages of the individual novels: The Second Bridegroom, The Grisly Wife, Captivity Captive. Brought together, these three novels detail the lives of the alienated and bitter residents of a small settlement on the east coast of Australia throughout the 19th century, in a dense, lyrical prose that moves this reader to tears.
August 6, 2011
As a whole this trilogy is an interesting read on colonial Australia, and the stories of the three generations are subtly tied in for a very nice effect.
Each story brings its own wit and tragedy. The tales are dark, complex, gripping - the description given to this book as a 'great colonial saga' is an apt one.
I found it took me forever to get through though. The style of writing is very descriptive and rich in metaphor, but sometimes so much so, it makes you feel like the author has veered off the story into some other world. Also the use of exceedingly long sentences (some a third of a page!) make reading these books cumbersome at times.
Although a gripping read, definitely not light or easy reading. I would recommend this trilogy to people who enjoy books they can really 'sink their teeth into'.
Each story brings its own wit and tragedy. The tales are dark, complex, gripping - the description given to this book as a 'great colonial saga' is an apt one.
I found it took me forever to get through though. The style of writing is very descriptive and rich in metaphor, but sometimes so much so, it makes you feel like the author has veered off the story into some other world. Also the use of exceedingly long sentences (some a third of a page!) make reading these books cumbersome at times.
Although a gripping read, definitely not light or easy reading. I would recommend this trilogy to people who enjoy books they can really 'sink their teeth into'.
July 11, 2025
I was led to this trilogy by Lisa, one of my Chief Reading Enablers. Her review of the second book led me to track down a copy of the trilogy. And, finally, eleven months after I obtained a paperback copy, I read it. I read the books in the order in which they appear in the trilogy: the timeline works for me. My thoughts drift through the books. ‘The Second Bridegroom’, set in the 1830s, opens with:
‘I must face the fact that I have forgotten who I am.’
This is the story of a young convict who, convicted of forgery and transported to Australia, escapes into an utterly foreign landscape after killing the man to whom he is shackled. Through Mr Hall’s wonderfully poetic prose, we see this landscape through the eyes of this myopic Manxman, and gradually recognise aspects of it. But this is no linear story. The Indigenous people who help him remain a mystery to him (and him to them). The story continues, with elements of magic realism as the young convict progresses on a journey. He observes and reports but does not seem to understand the world in which he finds himself. I am wondering whether he ever really knew who he was.
I move onto ‘The Grisly Wife’ which opens some thirty years later with:
‘Queer thing — but yes — we do mourn for the England we lost — maybe because the darkness of the tragedy awaiting us in New South Wales has left the memories of our youth bathed by contrast in clear simple light — and after so many years of exile one’s gentler adventures tend to rise to the surface more and more appealingly — …’
Meet Catherine Byrne, the English missionary, who has travelled to Australia with her husband John Heaps, who has renamed himself Muley Moloch after an Irish apostate. It is an act of penance, apparently. This is my least favourite of the trilogy, not because it offends me but because I have little patience with the cant of missionaries and their proselytising. But I move past my distaste for the characters into the world of the Household of Hidden Stars, Muley Moloch’s women disciples and the birth of a most unexpected child. Catherine’s thoughts shift from topic to topic and are not always easy to follow. The world described has changed in just thirty years: photography is slowly beginning to replace description; domestic machines are changing the way some lives are lived. But all lives must come to an end.
Which brings me to ‘Captivity Captive’. The opening sentence is:
‘There were crows in his eyes when he came right out with it, confessing that he had been the murderer.’
The murder described, of two sisters and a brother, happened in 1898 but has never been solved. In this novel, some fifty years after the event the elderly Patrick Malone decides to discern the truth. The terrain is traversed by looking back at a large family whose father valued self-sufficiency. Patrick may provide our voice for this generation, but it is Pa, to my mind, who dominates the story.
And so, I come to the end of a brilliant trilogy which over three generations examines Australia’s colonial history. Each of the stories depicts a different aspect of colonial influence: convicts and first contact; proselytisers and a changing world; unsolved murders and the insular self-sufficiency of a large family.
I cannot do this trilogy justice: my mind has followed some paths through the narrative while ignoring others.
Highly recommended … if you can find a copy.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
‘I must face the fact that I have forgotten who I am.’
This is the story of a young convict who, convicted of forgery and transported to Australia, escapes into an utterly foreign landscape after killing the man to whom he is shackled. Through Mr Hall’s wonderfully poetic prose, we see this landscape through the eyes of this myopic Manxman, and gradually recognise aspects of it. But this is no linear story. The Indigenous people who help him remain a mystery to him (and him to them). The story continues, with elements of magic realism as the young convict progresses on a journey. He observes and reports but does not seem to understand the world in which he finds himself. I am wondering whether he ever really knew who he was.
I move onto ‘The Grisly Wife’ which opens some thirty years later with:
‘Queer thing — but yes — we do mourn for the England we lost — maybe because the darkness of the tragedy awaiting us in New South Wales has left the memories of our youth bathed by contrast in clear simple light — and after so many years of exile one’s gentler adventures tend to rise to the surface more and more appealingly — …’
Meet Catherine Byrne, the English missionary, who has travelled to Australia with her husband John Heaps, who has renamed himself Muley Moloch after an Irish apostate. It is an act of penance, apparently. This is my least favourite of the trilogy, not because it offends me but because I have little patience with the cant of missionaries and their proselytising. But I move past my distaste for the characters into the world of the Household of Hidden Stars, Muley Moloch’s women disciples and the birth of a most unexpected child. Catherine’s thoughts shift from topic to topic and are not always easy to follow. The world described has changed in just thirty years: photography is slowly beginning to replace description; domestic machines are changing the way some lives are lived. But all lives must come to an end.
Which brings me to ‘Captivity Captive’. The opening sentence is:
‘There were crows in his eyes when he came right out with it, confessing that he had been the murderer.’
The murder described, of two sisters and a brother, happened in 1898 but has never been solved. In this novel, some fifty years after the event the elderly Patrick Malone decides to discern the truth. The terrain is traversed by looking back at a large family whose father valued self-sufficiency. Patrick may provide our voice for this generation, but it is Pa, to my mind, who dominates the story.
And so, I come to the end of a brilliant trilogy which over three generations examines Australia’s colonial history. Each of the stories depicts a different aspect of colonial influence: convicts and first contact; proselytisers and a changing world; unsolved murders and the insular self-sufficiency of a large family.
I cannot do this trilogy justice: my mind has followed some paths through the narrative while ignoring others.
Highly recommended … if you can find a copy.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
March 31, 2023
I picked up this book at a second hand bookshop in Yamba before covid and finally got around to reading it. Wow - these three novels are epic and left me breathless. I knew Rodney Hall as a poet and had read a couple of his novels but nothing prepared me for the richness of the writing here. Three disparate narrators weave three amazing tales. I can only suppose that this book is no longer in print which seems to be the unworthy fate of many great Oz novels from the past. Track it down. Better than most on offer now.
January 9, 2011
Another read during my Australian period. Thought this was great for understanding Australia during the settlement period (1870s to 1920s.) Well written.
July 18, 2012
Trilogy containing;
The Second Bridegroom
The Grisly Wife
Captivity.C.A.P.T.I.V.E.
The Second Bridegroom
The Grisly Wife
Captivity.C.A.P.T.I.V.E.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews